Myanmar’s 2025 Election: A “Sham Process” Amidst Military Rule and Resistance

Myanmar’s military rulers are moving ahead with a national election scheduled to begin on 28 December 2025, but few inside or outside the country believe it will resemble a genuine expression of popular will.[1] For millions of citizens who risked their lives to oppose the 2021 coup, the vote is less a choice than a grim ritual – one many sum up with a bitter phrase: “We will vote, but not with our hearts.”

Since overthrowing the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government in February 2021, the junta has governed under an almost continuous state of emergency, ruling by decree while waging war against a broad nationwide resistance.[1] That emergency formally lapsed in July 2025, and under the 2008 constitution an election must be held within six months – a deadline the generals now claim to be meeting.[1] In reality, nearly every rule of the contest has been redesigned to entrench military power and marginalize opponents.

At the core of this architecture is the military‑written 2008 Constitution, which already guarantees the armed forces 25% of the seats in the national parliament and one of the three vice presidencies, as well as control of key ministries.[1] That bloc alone is enough to veto constitutional change and to dominate security, defense, and internal affairs. The new election will sit on top of this fixed military veto, not replace it.

In January 2023, the junta went further, issuing a new electoral law that reshaped the party system and the way votes translate into seats.[1] All parties must now meet onerous registration requirements and cannot include anyone with a criminal conviction – a clause that automatically excludes Aung San Suu Kyi, former president Win Myint, and most of the NLD’s senior leadership, all jailed after the coup.[1] Unable to comply, the NLD and many other opposition parties were simply struck off the register. What remains legal is a narrow spectrum of tolerated parties, with the military’s long‑standing proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), at the center.[1]

At the same time, the junta has abandoned the first‑past‑the‑post system that allowed the NLD to win large majorities in 2015 and 2020, replacing it with a version of proportional representation for the upper house (Amyotha Hluttaw).[1] Analysts note that, when combined with the constitutionally reserved 25% of seats for officers, this change allows the military and its allies to govern with just over a third of the popular vote.[1] In other words, even if most voters back anti‑junta forces, the arithmetic of the new system makes it extremely difficult for them to translate that support into a governing majority.

The regime has also invested heavily in constructing a legal and administrative record that it can hold up as a technocratic achievement. A nationwide census in October 2024 was explicitly framed as groundwork for the 2025 election, despite being conducted amid active conflict, mass displacement, and deep mistrust.[1] Local administrators, in many cases under threat from both the military and resistance groups, were tasked with building voter lists and preparing polling logistics.

This technical façade masks the reality that vast parts of Myanmar are in open revolt. Since 2023, resistance forces and ethnic armed organizations have targeted officials involved in election preparations, seeing them as collaborators in a project designed to legitimize military rule.[1] The opposition National Unity Government (NUG) has gone further, publicly declaring anyone who cooperates with the polls to be an “accomplice of high treason.”[1] Major ethnic groups – including the Chin National Front, Karenni National Progressive Party, Karen National Union, Kachin Independence Organisation, and Ta-ang National Liberation Army – have all rejected the planned vote as illegitimate.[1]

Violence and displacement also raise a fundamental practical question: who will be able to vote at all? Even before the coup, it was “not uncommon for elections to be cancelled partially or completely in some constituencies due to insurrection.”[1] Now, with entire regions under resistance control or contested, whole swathes of the country may be excluded on “security” grounds, conveniently sidelining many of the junta’s most hostile populations. That exclusion will sit atop earlier patterns of disenfranchisement, including the stripping of political rights from many Rohingya and other Muslims over the past decade.[1]

Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly shifted the election timetable, promising in different years that polls would be held by August 2023, then later, before finally fixing on late December 2025.[1] Even a highly destabilizing Myanmar earthquake in 2025 did not dislodge the date; state media emphasized that the timeline would remain intact.[1] For critics, this rigidity underscores the political purpose of the exercise: to stage an orderly transition from overt emergency rule to a more cosmetically civilian system without surrendering real authority.

There is also a succession puzzle behind the scenes. Under the constitution, Min Aung Hlaing cannot simultaneously hold both the presidency and his powerful role as commander‑in‑chief.[1] The election, and the parliament it produces, will help determine how he and his inner circle balance formal offices and informal power. Some observers suggest the delays and legal maneuvers of recent years reflect not only battlefield calculations but also internal jockeying inside the officer corps.[1]

For many ordinary people, these elite calculations are remote from daily survival. Across the country, families have lost relatives to conflict, detention, and economic collapse. The promise of the 2015 and 2020 elections – that ballots might gradually replace bullets – has been shattered. In this context, participation in the 2025 vote, where it happens at all, is likely to be fragmented. Some will boycott entirely, aligning with the NUG and resistance groups that argue any turnout only props up a sham. Others, especially in more tightly controlled urban areas, may feel compelled to cast a ballot under pressure or in the faint hope of extracting small concessions at the local level.

Yet few harbor illusions about the outcome. With key opponents banned, opposition parties hollowed out, electoral districts likely carved around conflict lines, and a constitutional veto entrenched in uniform, the election has been widely described by analysts as a “sham process” intended to legitimize continued military rule.[1] For citizens who once lined up enthusiastically to vote in freer, if still imperfect, contests, the emotional distance is stark. Many now talk of voting, if they vote at all, as a defensive act – a way to avoid punishment, not to shape their future.

In that sense, the phrase “We will vote but not with our hearts” captures more than personal disillusionment. It is a quiet indictment of an electoral ritual emptied of meaning, a warning that a regime can count ballots without ever winning consent. In Myanmar’s 2025 election, the generals may succeed in producing numbers and headlines. Winning back the hearts they have broken will be far harder.

Original source: BBC News – World – ‘We will vote but not with our hearts’: Inside the election staged by Myanmar’s military rulers